The CIA has tweeted a Russian-language quote from author Boris Pasternak about his acclaimed novel Doctor Zhivago, which the agency published and helped smuggle into the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

The January 15 post on the CIA's Twitter feed quotes Pasternak as saying, "I wrote this novel in order for it to be published and read, and that remains my only desire."

The post was one of several from the CIA ahead of a Washington event later on January 15 dedicated to the CIA’s covert program to distribute banned books to Soviet bloc intellectuals during the Cold War.

The CIA last year declassified 99 documents describing the agency’s role in publishing Doctor Zhivago in Russian for the first time in 1958 after it had been banned by Soviet authorities.